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1340 Strategy games reviewed and scored, best first.
1340 reviews
A falling-sand physics factory game — every grain, drop and spark is a simulated resource — that went into Early Access on 13 August 2026 to a near-unanimous reception, backed by Hooded Horse and pre-release press comparing it to Factorio, Terraria and Noita all at once.
8 / 10
A solo-developer idle/incremental game about growing a server farm from a battered laptop to planet-scale compute — three genuinely distinct minigames, a finite Singularity ending that Steam's own achievement data shows a striking share of players actually reach, and no microtransactions or ads anywhere on a NZ$4.79 price tag.
8 / 10
A supernatural pirate real-time stealth-tactics game from Mimimi Games, the studio behind Shadow Tactics and Desperados III, praised for its polished craft and inventive cursed-crew abilities — released to a Very Positive reception that sits alongside real complaints about padding, and a launch-period review-bombing campaign unrelated to the game's actual design.
8 / 10
A genuinely inventive Balatro-inspired reinvention of chess, where captures build score toward combo-chasing runs against rule-bending bosses, praised nearly unanimously for its deep synergy-building despite a steep opening learning curve and some UI legibility rough edges.
8 / 10
A Swing, A Pile Of Shoes, And A World That Deserves It Shoe it All!, released September 3, 2026 from developer Amberbite and publisher Bright Gambit, opens with a premise so simple
8 / 10
The definitive modern Civilization for most players, thanks to two expansions that meaningfully deepened its district-and-diplomacy foundation — carrying an old, now-dated controversy over a data-collection policy update, and a genre-standard but real DLC bill for anyone chasing the complete roster.
8 / 10
A lovingly built retro CRPG that fuses Ultima-era pixel art with genuine Lovecraftian horror and tabletop-inspired tactical combat, beloved for a first half that critics call nearly flawless, held to a lower score mostly by a well-documented back-half quality drop and controller support that stayed broken after a real fix attempt.
8 / 10
Two Puzzle Genres That Have No Business Working This Well Together Sokogram is a $9.99 puzzle game from solo developer PressGtoGeorge that fuses two genres, nonogram logic grids an
8 / 10
A small Paris studio built a turn-based CRPG on Dungeons & Dragons' free 5.1 rules document rather than a paid brand license, and the result plays closer to an actual tabletop session than any of its bigger-budget rivals — verticality, light and darkness included — while looking and sounding like exactly the smaller production it is.
8 / 10
A tile-by-tile spaceship colony sim where you build the hull, route the gas pipes, and keep a crew of civilians fed, breathing, and sane while you search a procedural galaxy for a new home. Reached 1.0 in May 2026 after six years in Early Access.
8 / 10
A grid-tactics deckbuilder that fuses Into the Breach-style positioning with a real card engine and a Space Invaders-flavoured alien assault, backed by a Metacritic 85 and an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam score — with real, specific complaints about UI clarity and balance outliers sitting underneath the acclaim.
8 / 10
A genuinely original turn-based tactics game — wizards in kevlar defenestrating enemies through fixed, puzzle-like encounters — that critics and most players love, but that a real, persistent minority bounces off within a couple of hours for advertising a freedom the game doesn't actually offer, plus a quippy writing style that divides its own fanbase.
8 / 10
A Cozy-Looking Puzzle Game That Bites Much Harder Than It Looks Tezzel: The Tilemaker's Tale, from developer and publisher Old Mayor Studios, released on Steam on April 10, 202
8 / 10
A build-crafting incremental about small creatures smashing a rock for wealth, where the usual "number always goes up" comfort is replaced by permanent choices that can genuinely sabotage a run.
8 / 10
A brutally difficult tactics/tower-defense hybrid where a handful of heroes must defend a mage casting a world-saving spell across ten nights, praised for its combat depth, art and soundtrack — held back by a genuinely divisive balance history and a meta-progression system some reviewers say punishes unlocking too much too fast.
8 / 10
A minimalist build-by-day, defend-by-night strategy game from a two-person studio that became a genuine indie hit — reviewed on its full post-1.0 record, including an achievement curve that maps exactly where players stop, and the small, sold-off, still-supported story behind it.
8 / 10
A city builder where the antagonist isn't a raid or a monster roster but a drought timer, and every dam, canal and reservoir you build is really an answer to a scheduling problem. Beavers are the theme; water is the game.
8 / 10
A tactical roguelike where you charge devastating spells on a match-3 grid and cast them against technofascist cyberpunk CEOs while climbing a corporate tower, drawing a small but unanimously positive early review base for its deep combo-driven mechanics, sharp anti-capitalist satire and confidently tongue-in-cheek writing.
8 / 10
A widely loved grand-strategy classic whose negative sample documents a real 2018 spyware scandal, persistent Denuvo/always-online friction, and a heavily criticised DLC structure requiring ownership of a separate game to access its best campaign mode — a complaint Creative Assembly substantially resolved in December 2025 by giving Warhammer III free to owners.
8 / 10
A tactics RPG built on genuine terrain manipulation and a persuasion-driven branching story, from the producer behind Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler — and a game whose own Steam reviews argue at length about just how much dialogue sits between its battles.
8 / 10
A tactical fantasy RPG where you never actually give a combat order — you write a standing set of instructions for each unit and then watch your army carry them out, which makes it one of the closest things a big-budget console release has come to an automation game.
8 / 10
The deckbuilder that removed the luck. You see every reward in advance and rebuild your deck between every fight — which makes it the most controllable game in its genre, and is exactly why some players bounce off it. Six dollars, 251 achievements, and criminally under-noticed.
8 / 10
VÖLUND is a blacksmithing-themed deckbuilder roguelike from a solo Canadian developer, casting players as a captive smith mining ore, forging weapons and armor, and selling into a shifting market to survive a king's trials, and this review's sample is unanimous, addictive, and openly delighted by the developer's own self-deprecating, joke-filled marketing voice.
8 / 10
Shiro Games' open-world mercenary RPG treats a company of sellswords as a small business — wages, food, gear repair and prisoners are the real spreadsheet, and combat is what happens when that spreadsheet goes wrong.
8 / 10
